George F. Jackson

Foreword by Charles R. Hajdamach

Glass is one of the most seductive of mediums and many practitioners in other art disciplines have fallen for its many charms and transferred their allegiance to become glass artists and sculptors. One of those recent devotees is George Jackson who took up glass after a career as a painter, a ceramicist and a Director and Head of Art in Creative Studies Faculties and Art and Design Departments.

His move from ceramic artist to working with pâte-de-verre recalls the same progression by the great French pâte-de-verre artists at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries including Henri Cros, François Décorchement, Almeric Walter and Gabriel Argy-Rousseau. It was their expertise as ceramic artists that inspired them to work with glass and likewise George uses many of those techniques in the early stages of his glass sculptures.

Initially he makes his works in clay from which moulds are taken and used to create the three-dimensional object. Glass is ground into a fine crushed powder and mixed with a fluxing medium so that it will melt easily in the kiln. Varying colours and coloured powdered glass can be used and the mixtures have to be placed into the mould in reverse order, with the colours that will be on the outside of the piece going in first. The mould with the glass paste inside is then heated up to melting point in a kiln and held at that temperature to ensure that all the glass fuses together. Large pieces need to be kept in the kiln for long periods to allow gradual cooling if the piece is not to suffer from firing cracks and disfigurements.

Taking up this complex glass technique in 2003 at the International Glass Centre in Brierley Hill George quickly mastered every aspect and by 2006 had his sculpture entitled ‘Standing in the Portal’ accepted and exhibited in the prestigious British Glass Biennale. It marked his emergence on the British glass stage as a major artistic force adding a valuable and original voice to a historic technique. His Biennale piece is typical of his current work with figures standing on steps or inside doorways and arches, the architecture containing suggestions of ancient signs and symbols. The restrained and moody colours suggest a heritage to ancient Egyptian stele while some of his female figures remind one of the Sheel-na-Gig carvings of the female mother figure in Irish architecture. Talking about his preferred pâte-de-verre technique, he describes it as “challenging, unpredictable yet satisfying”. The same positive adjectives could be used for his own work.

Charles R. Hajdamach